In its report, the Commission on Capital Punishment condensed its recommendations into a summary of 10 items. These are taken from the report's preamble. • We recommend videotaping all questioning of a capital suspect conducted in a police facility, and repeating on tape, in the presence of the prospective defendant, any of his statements alleged to have been made elsewhere.

Debating Death

Too often in Illinois, police and prosecutors have seemed hell-bent on convictions - not justice - when it comes to serious crimes. "Too often" is once if it means the death penalty, but at least 13 times the state has sent somebody to death row who was later discovered to be innocent.
In opening her presentation at a Quad Cities appearance on April 12, Maggie Gallagher explained what the "Marriage Movement" is not. Gallagher, an affiliate scholar with the Institute for American Values, said the Marriage Movement is not a polarizing political issue or a set of political initiatives.
If the members of the Davenport Community School District board take their jobs seriously, they have a lot of information to sort through between now and April 22, when they're scheduled to vote whether to close Johnson and Grant schools.
Nikki DeFauw has three children in Adams Elementary School. If the Davenport Community School District votes next week to close Grant and Johnson elementary schools, the ensuing realignment of school boundaries will result in her kids being sent to Harrison next fall.
It's shorter than a one-night stand - well, it should be, anyway - but it's not like that at all. "You're committed to them for seven minutes, and that's it," said Susan Esser. What Esser is describing is Seven-Minute Dating, a service she started a year ago to help singles meet each other with little commitment.

Thinking Big

The biggest change atop Museum Hill in west-central Davenport has been the opening of the Putnam Museum's new 270-seat IMAX theatre, with its contemporary glass-dominated architecture dwarfing the adjacent history-and-natural-science museum and the Davenport Museum of Art.
Steve Banks has a jovial intensity, and while he takes his art seriously, it's not too seriously. When I tried to maneuver around one painting to avoid damaging it, Banks said, "You're not going to hurt anything but yourself.

Rapid Rip-Off

With the filing deadline for income taxes in less than three weeks, a lot of people are turning to professional tax preparers to assist with their returns. But those services can come at a steep cost, and a recent study found that they're also steering hundreds of millions of dollars away from recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit.
A rich Quad Cities cultural history was restored last weekend. Thanks to Homefolks Communications and Ebony Expressions and their Jazz & Blues Restoration Project, three of the Quad Cities' greatest born-and-bred musicians were invited to provide workshops and concerts March 7 through 9: saxophonist Franz Jackson, drummer Francis Clay, and pianist and educator Bill Bell.

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